Tuesday, June 30, 2009

So, last week I made the mistake/choice of watching Transformers 2 - I *am* glad to say that there was no forking over of money on my part, thankfully. I thought I'd post my review/experience.

From the minute the opening credits rolled, the experience that was Transformers2 began. My life would never be the same.

Akin to the astronaut Dave from one of my favourite films 2001: A Space Odyssey, I may have seen Beyond the Infinite, I'm not entirely sure - as one never really can be.

I felt as though Director Extraordinaire Michael "KABOOM" Bay was actually physically inside my head, punching the very knowledge and being out of my brain for the 9 hour long duration of the movie.

I can't really remember when/how I stumbled out of the theater, it's all such a blur...this is the best rendition I can come up with based on the information I've pieced together.

It's not a blur for Michael "KABOOM" Bay though! He's laughing in his giant mac truck, painted like Optimus Prime, all the way to the bank.

I'm sorry that there aren't more details about the plot - or spoilers - as I can't really tell you what happened. There were explosions, loud colors, even louder noises. The entire movie looked like this to me:I was reading up on the psyche of Michael "KABOOM" Bay, and I think this quote was amazing:

“Visual-effects supervisor Scott Farrar was in charge of turning Industrial Light & Magic’s computers up to 11 to create the new characters and told reporters that the sequel features 40 new characters. That and the increased resolution of the characters for new IMAX footage nearly exhausted ILM’s render farms: After one hard night of rendering computer-generated footage, some of the hardware actually exploded.”

Even the computers of ILM couldn't take the AWESOME that he was about to put on screen. He overcame, you guys.

In short, you can clearly see that I really think you should go see the movie. It's a cinematic masterp...aw hell...It's the loudest, longest, eye-ringing, head-smacking movie I've ever seen, shock after shock of you wondering, "wow, how could this make any LESS sense?" and the question being answered over, and over, and over again.

If you do see it, don't resist it, don't try and make sense of it, let it take you. Whatever you think meets your eye, it's more than that.

Friday, June 12, 2009

Designs/character exploration for a comic/short project I'm attempting to develop.

Random Doodles

Here are a bunch of gestures I did this week while traveling the subway, and sitting in coffee shops. Been trying to work on some stuff I've been learning from the Stanchfield books. Still a long way to go, but hopefully these are going in the right direction.

Some cool stuff I've found on the interwebs this week: Multicolr Search Lab lets you search Flickr by color. The new Gobelins films are out, too. Check out my friend Ugo's "Jelly Sunday"Also, I recently started re-watching HBO's underrated series "Carnivale" - if you have some spare time and are wondering what to watch, definitely check it out. It got cancelled after two seasons, but worth it. Lastly, Jenny over at Blackwing Diaries has made a great post about Up, and animated films in general. Definitely worth a read.

Thursday, June 04, 2009

These were done (really quickly) at a new music night at the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto. The band playing is The Superstitions. They were rather good.

I liked the attitudes of the characters on this page.

I was attempting to simplify with this page, I think I got something withthe girl on the top left.

Not too much to write - UP was awesome, want to congratulate my friends Vlad Kooperman and Guillaume Chartier, as well as Pete Docter, Ronnie, Nick and all who worked on it for an amazing job. Also, if you haven't seen the Beatles Rock Band debut trailer, I'm assuming directed by Pete Candeland and Designed by Robert Valley, check it out here. Lastly, I was reading the Walt Stanchfield book, and something jumped out at me, I'll leave you with this:

"Drawing for animation is translating and action...into drawing form so an audience can retranslate those drawings back into an experience of that action." -Walt Stanchfield